15.7.7.4 SHOW CHARACTER SET Statement

SHOW {CHARACTER SET | CHARSET}
    [LIKE 'pattern' | WHERE expr]

The SHOW CHARACTER SET statement shows all available character sets. The LIKE clause, if present, indicates which character set names to match. The WHERE clause can be given to select rows using more general conditions, as discussed in Section 28.8, “Extensions to SHOW Statements”. For example:

mysql> SHOW CHARACTER SET LIKE 'latin%';
+---------+-----------------------------+-------------------+--------+
| Charset | Description                 | Default collation | Maxlen |
+---------+-----------------------------+-------------------+--------+
| latin1  | cp1252 West European        | latin1_swedish_ci |      1 |
| latin2  | ISO 8859-2 Central European | latin2_general_ci |      1 |
| latin5  | ISO 8859-9 Turkish          | latin5_turkish_ci |      1 |
| latin7  | ISO 8859-13 Baltic          | latin7_general_ci |      1 |
+---------+-----------------------------+-------------------+--------+

SHOW CHARACTER SET output has these columns:

• Charset

  The character set name.

• Description

  A description of the character set.

• Default collation

  The default collation for the character set.

• Maxlen

  The maximum number of bytes required to store one character.

The filename character set is for internal use only; consequently, SHOW CHARACTER SET does not display it.

Character set information is also available from the INFORMATION_SCHEMA CHARACTER_SETS table.